There’s a nationwide tampon shortage and, for some reason, people are blaming Amy Schumer

Inflation has led to a 10% increase in the cost of tampons over the past year and now there’s a full-on nationwide shortage. But what does this have to do with Amy Schumer?

In 2020, a series of Tampax ads featuring Schumer debuted and a spokesperson for Procter & Gamble credits them with causing a significant increase in sales, telling a reporter for Time that “retail sales growth has exploded.”

In response to the claim, Schumer posted a screenshot of an article on the shortage that used an image of her ad and commented “Whoa I don’t even have a uterus.”

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“What’s been going on for a couple months is that organizations call us up and say, ‘we need tampons,’ and we go to our warehouse and there’s nothing there,” Dana Marlowe, the founder of I Support the Girls said in a quote to Time. 

“To put it bluntly, tampons are next to impossible to find. … I would say it’s been like this for a solid six months,” says Michelle Wolfe, a radio host in Bozeman, Montana.

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While Procter & Gamble recognizes the shortage, their claim that Schumer’s ad is the cause of it presents a further batch of questions that they don’t have a clear answer for beyond statements that efforts are being made to fix it.

“The Tampax team is producing tampons 24/7 to meet the increased demand for our products,” the company said in a statement to NBC. “We are working with our retail partners to maximize availability.”

“In terms of the speed of the increase, it’s the sharpest I’ve ever seen,” Pricie Hanna, a raw materials consulting expert, said in a quote to Bloomberg. “At this point, people are scratching their heads and saying, ‘This is something new.” 

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